Revealing Silence at the Gaza-Egypt Border

At about 1:10 on Sunday, December 28, 2008, the BBC anchor Peter Dobbie found out, along with his audience, that there were 40 Egyptian ambulances ready to evacuate wounded, and lorries full of medical goods sent by Qatar to restock Gazan hospitals, waiting at the border crossing in Egypt. (According to another source there were also 50 Egyptian doctors ready to go into the Strip to help.) Since Dobbie and his audience had heard the repeated complaint from the people in Gaza that the hospitals were overwhelmed by the injured and desperately lacking in supplies, one would have expected the border to be full of purposeful activity. Instead, nothing was happening. The Gazan side lay silent.

A real journalist, someone with a smell for revealing anomalies, would have immediately recognized this as an important story to follow up on. After all, Dobbie had not hesitated to interrupt and challenge Israeli spokesmen on precisely the issues at stake: the disproportion between Israeli-caused fatalities and Israeli-suffered fatalities, the inevitable suffering of innocent civilians when such a bombing campaign takes place in so densely populated an area. “The math doesn’t work,” said Dobbie, implying what commentators emphasized elsewhere — the “disproportionate use of force” the Israelis were employing.

So here was a perfect issue with which to challenge Hamas spokesmen: If they were so distraught at the loss of life of their own people, why didn’t they take care of them? What on earth would possess Hamas not to avail themselves of what they pleadingly told the world they so desperately needed? As the honest and courageous Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey put it, “My head hurts.”

Alas, the BBC did nothing of the sort. The next six hours saw nothing but canned footage repeating Palestinian complaints, voiced not only by Hamas spokesmen and BBC reporters, but UN officials like Chris Gunning and human rights advocates, and, of course, others in the Western MSM.

Indeed, one might characterize the basic “frame” of the MSM Gaza story: Israeli Goliath creates Palestinian David humanitarian crisis. Four out of five stories tell this story in one way or another, including the interviews with Israeli officials asking them to justify their deed. (Ironically, that’s about the ratio of Hamas men to civilian casualties in the first days.)

Too bad. Had the BBC behaved like real journalists instead of parroting Palestinian narratives, they might have taken the “golden” (read excremental) thread that leads out of the labyrinth and straight to the “real story.” That story, of course, is the dreadful Palestinian strategy, taken to new heights by Hamas in the early 21st century — play the victim card at any cost. In this case, create a genuine humanitarian crisis.

Hamas initially offered two reasons for not allowing the wounded out: 1) the roads were too dangerous to venture out on, and 2) they were composing a list of the wounded. Both of these are just the kind of lame excuse that, had they been voiced by Israeli spokesmen, the BBC interviewers would have jumped all over them. Israelis have targeted only military and government sites; no ambulances have been hit and the roads are full of cars bringing wounded (past cameras) to hospitals. As for making up a list of 600 wounded before evacuating any, surely you must be kidding.

Then Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum, speaking to Khaled Abu Toameh, denied the Egyptian allegation that Hamas was to blame, “claiming that many of the wounded rejected an Egyptian offer to receive medical treatment in Cairo in protest against Cairo’s ‘support’ for the IDF operation. He accused the Egyptians of taking part in the ‘siege’ on the Gaza Strip by refusing to reopen the Rafah crossing.” Hamas even delivered before the cameras a group of “family members” who claimed they refused to let their wounded go because of their anger at Egypt’s behavior. On the contrary, as Ma’an News Agency reported, Hamas would allow no passage of wounded until the border was completely open.

More hollow claims. Gazans don’t hesitate to accept medical aid from the Israelis, the people who in their minds actually inflict the wounds. So why not take Egyptian aid? And of the 600 wounded (according to Palestinian sources) all of them, suffering in a ludicrously crowded and understaffed hospital, refused to go to Egypt?

Although the reasons are hollow, they do tell us about Hamas priorities, and the overwhelming message of this refusal is that helping their own civilians survive ranks very low on their scale, well below revenge and public relations concerns. Indeed, as with Israel, so with Egypt: they hold their people hostage to maximalist demands.

Some say Hamas doesn’t care about their people. The evidence suggests far worse. They actively seek the victimization of their own people. Indeed, the enormous resources they have expended on the constant, if largely ineffective, barrage of rockets on Israeli civilians is actually quite staggering. Not only have they lavished much of their meager resources to this vicious and gratuitous activity, but, as a result of those attacks, guaranteed that their borders would be closed and their people would continue to suffer — hostages to their hatred. Thus, the phony excuses offered for the border snafu disguise something far more sinister: Hamas wants the crisis; they want civilians dying dramatically in wretched hospitals.

On the face of it, it seems absurd that a government would actively victimize its own people. What advantage in making an already miserable people suffer even more? There are two major explanations here. First, Hamas, like many other Palestinian groups, is addicted to violence against Israel. Anything they can do, no matter how small, to make Israelis suffer, they will do, whatever the cost. As the Israeli satirical program, Eretz Nehederet (like Saturday Night Live) had Hamas leader al-Zahar explain to Ehud Barak, “Kassams are like cigarettes … you can’t just quit all at once.” Thus, they have spent virtually all their resources on smuggling and firing weapons while their people suffer their government’s neglect and Israeli retaliatory blockades.

But the second explanation is far more disturbing, because it involves the media. Hamas only gains a real advantage to having Palestinians suffer if they, who do so much to inflict that suffering, can blame it on Israel. It would be absurd for Hamas to stand in front of the world and say, “Look at how much we make our own people suffer; join us in hating Israel.” So the game is intensely hypocritical. It depends on getting public opinion, both in the Arab-Muslim world and in the West, to accept a scapegoating narrative — the Palestinian Guernica — that deflects responsibility.

And the pathetic thing is that it works. In the Arab world gory images of dead and wounded play round the clock, inciting furious demonstrations. But, alas, it also works in the West. And it works primarily because of the behavior of the Western media, who systematically frame the conflict in terms of the Israeli Goliath and the Palestinian David, who do not hesitate to challenge Israeli spokesmen, interrupt them, contradict them — but who fail to do anything of the sort with their Arab interlocutors.

Thus, for hours and days after the story of idling ambulances first broke, BBC never mentioned it. On the contrary, they continued to run footage of complaints from Gaza about the terrible condition of the hospitals and calls for international intervention to save the poor people of Gaza. This enables the worst kind of hypocrisy, of demopathic behavior — accuse others of violations of a humanitarian code which you flout, not only with your enemies, but with your own people.

The next day, when Christian Fraser finally got some more airtime again, the border was open even if sluggish. No mention of the earlier, revealing incident ensued. Kristy Lang, the anchor, begins with a leading question that does not allow for much elucidation:

KL: “I’m with BBC correspondent Christian Fraser who’s at the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza. This, just to remind you, this is a crossing that has been closed for the last few days. They are letting some people through, isn’t that right Christian?”

CF: “Yes, they’re letting across the most seriously injured; they’ve just let 10 in the past several hours, up to about 40 in the last couple of days. These are the most seriously injured.”

Nor is this kind of discreet silence passed over Hamas behavior restricted to the Beeb. CNN didn’t even mention the story, despite their anchors citing material from the wire services, where all the major ones covered it. Similarly, when a young girl described waking up in bed next to her dead sisters and then blamed it on Hamas — “Hamas is the cause, in the first place, of all wars” — ABC ran the footage without including the final, devastating comment. Why? Because it didn’t make sense to them? Because it violated the “grand narrative” and would only confuse the public?

The moral irony here is almost unbearable. While Hamas systematically and deliberately victimizes its people in order to court Western support in outrage at the suffering of her people, the media get indignant about how Israel makes the Palestinians suffer. The very values that underlie the media’s rebuke — the value of human life — are values that Israel and the Western media share and Hamas has contempt for. And in so doing, they make Hamas’ revolting calculus of inflicting suffering on their own people pay off.

To take a typical example of someone whose outrage disproportionately exceeds his understanding, take Chris Hedges’ latest:

Can anyone who is following the Israeli air attacks on Gaza — the buildings blown to rubble, the children killed on their way to school, the long rows of mutilated corpses, the wailing mothers and wives, the crowds of terrified Palestinians not knowing where to flee, the hospitals so overburdened and out of supplies they cannot treat the wounded, and our studied, callous indifference to this widespread human suffering — wonder why we are hated?

There’s reason to hope that Barack Obama may suffer from a small outbreak of common sense in the area of foreign policy. His July comment “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing” shows a rare bit of real world thinking often missing from the left. He also advocated striking within Pakistan if we had the appropriate intelligence – which we do now thanks to the trail left behind by the Mumbai attackers. And the face-to-face meeting with Iranian leaders could potentially be used to push them into a corner, like the Reagan-Gorbachev meeting in which we walked away from the table. Well, if they can hope, so can I.

The reason the press doesn’t take Hamas to task is not at all complicated or obscure. The press, by and large, are liberal anti-Semites who lump Israel in with the West, which they of course hate. They support Hamas not because the think Hamas is the British Labour Party but because Hamas hates the West, and the US and Israel in particular. Hamas is the enemy of their enemy: us.
Surely everyone understands this.

Hamas has successfully weaponized their people as victims and the MSM as their propagandists. You have to give credit where credit is due. 911 which caused trillions of dollars and wobbled the west cost $5M tops.

So without investing in biological or gene warfare Hamas has been able to harness the breeding of their people into an effective weapon and amplified it through the Media.

James. I disagree with you. The MSM people are not antisemites. There were people who disliked Jews, would had never befriended one and even wanted to expel them of their countries. But when the Nazis came they risked or even gave their lives to save those same Jews they disliked, not because they had changed opinion but because they didn’t want them murdered

What the MSM people want is, what HAMAS and PLO have explictly said: not the mere destruction of the state of Israel but the extermination of the Jews in a second Shoah, this time with Rwanda-like savagery and sadism but with ten times more dead.

So don’t mix the MM people with the “honorable antisemites” I mentionned above. Call them alternazis or postnazis. It will be closer to the truth.

The moral irony here is almost unbearable. While Hamas systematically and deliberately victimizes its people in order to court Western support in outrage at the suffering of her people, the media get indignant about how Israel makes the Palestinians suffer.

Hamas has been known to stage death scenes (Paliwood) for the benefit of the western press.

In one of these videos, when the cameras stop rolling, “the deceased” gets up off of the funeral bier and walks away.

And then there’s the whole Al-Durra brouhaha.

Undoubtedly, getting medical help for injured civilians would be a low level (or even non-existent) Hamas goal. Civilians are regarded as fodder for the larger agenda.

I recall a statement from that wanton slaughter-er in Iraq, al Zarqawi, that masses of Muslim individuals (especially for him, shi’ites) should be expected to die in service to jihad.

The BBC’s and CNN’s of the planet are so ideologically bent and fundamentally stupid as to have become completely vulnerable to radical manipulation.

I don’t get it. If all of the Islamists are craving martyrdom so they can die and go to whatever their version of heaven is, then why are they angry that the Israelis are killing them. They should be thanking the Israelis.

There is a day of judgment for everyone. What will these reporters and managers of the news services say when asked why their focus was on the harm and loss of life the Israeli army is causing without mention that there would have been no Israeli reaction if Hamas, hiding its launch sites in civilian residences, had not caused it all by launching rockets indiscriminately into Israel. Must the Israelis turn the other cheek and do nothing?

I disagree with the posters who are talking about the antisemitism of the press and liberals. I don’t believe most of them are antisemites (though some certainly are, disguising it with a flimsy mask of “anti-Zionism.”) Liberals view the world through a lens of victim and oppressor. The Palestinians are “victims,” which gives them carte blanche to act in any way they see fit towards the “oppressor.”

If the Palestinians want to strap nail bombs to their children and send them to blow up Israeli pizza parlors, it’s allowable because they’re oppressed. If they fire hundreds of rockets into civilian areas of Israel, it’s allowable because they’re oppressed. If they oppress THEIR OWN PEOPLE, it’s allowable because the Israelis are oppressing them. In fact, far more than just being allowable, the modern left will twist itself into knots to defend each and every action the oppressed group takes, even if they violate all standards that the left holds to be important. Victimhood trumps everything else… decency, common sense, even liberal standards.

1. Why does Hamas victimize its own people? Because they want to. Because that is a very small price to pay for the political gain on the international scene.
2. Why doesn’t the media call them on it? Because they don’t want to. Because their obvious incompetence being thus further documented is a small price to pay for the “respect” of the insane Arab world.

I don’t get it. If all of the Islamists are craving martyrdom so they can die and go to whatever their version of heaven is, then why are they angry that the Israelis are killing them. They should be thanking the Israelis.

Well, the head honchos are often hiding & protecting their own asses with the last inch of their lives. While, at the same, brainwashing the young and vulnerable into the glories of jihad.

It’s one of the bigger tragedies in my view, how the young and ignorant are recruited and exploited.

For insights into the whole…process…I recommend renting the 2005 Palestinian film, Paradise Now.

Unfortunetly this will once again be another blip of violence and “outrages” in the middle east. In the end nothing will come of it for either side. Not until one side or the other really decides to “go for it” and damn the press will anything substantial occur.

Hamas views the civilian residents of Gaza as more weapons in its arsenal, no different from the rockets it fires at Israel. Like other fanatics throughout the ages, they believe that no amount of human life, anywhere, is more important than the Cause.

I hope bloggers here write letters to the editor. It’s crucial to get the word out beyond the walls of non-mainstream media.

17 lynne – If you’re going to go this route, keep in mind that 1) products are owned by larger companies that are owned by even larger companies that you may never know about and pretty much touch every aspect of our lives, and 2) if you’re going to boycott, make sure you alert both the manufacturers of the product and the media outlet of your intention to do so. Otherwise, the impact is even less likely to matter.

There is something else to bear in mind here, especially when we start feeling we’re superior to those dumb, enlightened folks of past eras who did not oppose slavery, or Hitler in 1939, or other things that are clearly manifest evils to us now: People, more often than not, do not recognize the evil of their own time.

I admired the film “Schindler’s List” as much as anyone, but it took no bravery whatsoever to make a film showing the Nazis were depraved murderers 50 years after the fact. (Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” was far gutsier, and Chaplin clearly recognized Hitler’s evil but was blind to the evils of Communism.) Who did Spielberg offend here in the States by making an anti-Nazi film? The pathetic denizens of StormFront? The remaining 5 members of the KKK who aren’t FBI plants? Similiarly, “Saving Pvt. Ryan” was a good movie, but I noticed that Spielberg’s generation didn’t admire the ethos and sacrifices made by the Greatest Generation very much back in, say, 1970. They were too busy burning draft cards, avowing that they would never trust anyone over 30 (good advice, when you consider Bill Ayers today) and chanting “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the Viet Cong are gonna win.” Good God, Spielberg condemned the Nazis and yet went to Cuba and cozied up to Castro, a tyrant who has killed many innocent people and would not balk at killing as many as Hitler. The difference is that Hitler was the head of the most populous and educated country in Europe and Castro runs an unimportant banana republic without much power to shape world events. And Castro never ranted about Jews, he was an equal opportunity tyrant – just imprisoned and killed anyone who criticized his regime, black, white, uneducated, educated,..,

It’s terribly easy and satisfying to look back on past generations and think “Oh, god, how blind those people have been not to see that slavery (or Stalin, or Hitler) were evil and had to be stopped.” But post-9/11 history has shown me that throughout history, many clear and apparent evils are not clear and apparent evils to most people at the time. So let’s please get off our high horse about the racism and anti-semitism and sexism and insensitivity of those benighted generations past.

Most people accept whatever the conventional wisdom of the time is: Blacks are inferior? OK! Jews are inferior? OK! Israel is persecuting the Palestinians? OK! Global warming is a bigger threat than the war on terror? OK! Right-wing Christians are a bigger threat than Muslim terrorists? Sure, I’ll buy that!

P.S. That is one reason, BTW, that I write comments at PJM. Not because I hope to persuade many people, but because it should be recorded somewhere that that I, and other ordinary people like me, did not buy into the prevailing horsesh*t, the p.c. cliches, of my era.

If the liberals wanted to find oppressed people they could find them in Darfur.

And when the problem was conflict between Western/whites and non-Western/non Whites there was never this level of venom. The reason tehy are so keen on the Palestiniians is that it allows to say things it was not impossible to say since Auschwitz and help for a second final solution.

IF only the MSM had learned its lessons at the knees of Richard Landes. He brilliantly exposed (several years ago!) the true nature of what passes for reporting out of the Middle East. If they bothered to adhere to the principles of journalism, they would recognize all the Pallywood signposts.
One needn’t be a professor, nor even a college graduate to realize that the Arabs have mastered the ‘fine art’ of staging scenes in the midst of war zones.
Too bad the MSM has refused to catch on. It was this failure to learn their lessons that has made many people turn to alternative media sites, and to shun their ‘reporting’.

Donna, I applaud you for your post and agree wholeheartedly. You nailed it. It is truly a disease of the mind that one would think would eventually dissapear. Yet as history shows us, when confronted by true evil, most humans go blind, or at the least turn a blind eye. Thank you for the excellent post.
P.S. I just wanted to be on the record with you on this!

Donna, in 21 you take the necessary time and words to make a great point. Completely agree. The inability or unwillingness on the part of the majority of our electorate (apparently) to THINK about things has laid the groundwork for so much disconnected nonsense with incredibly serious consequences.

My motivation for posting here ‘n there is the same as yours described in #23. Thank you for saying it plainly here.

Thank God for the internet: the stuff that used to float by in the night, unseen and unheard, IS seen and heard today. We DO get to make a statement in response. They will never be able to say that “well, nobody opposed it at the time.”

Despite a significant drop in Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel in the past two days, the IDF kept the pressure on Hamas on Saturday, striking at least 25 targets in overnight sorties.
Following the air strikes, a Hamas spokesman announced that al-Jamal was killed in the attack. He was the third senior operative in the group to be targeted in the past three days.

Perhaps the philosophy of the Professional Palistinian victim is the same as the leper in “Life of Brian” who’s sustenance was insured by his “appearing” sickness/ injury/ sad state. “So if our people don’t appear helpless and wounded enough . . . let’s do something to make them so” . . . insuring a constant supply of manna from the corrupt (whp’s only wish is to assuage their own self loathing).

“tolerating Hamas is the Arabs sin so long as Arabs support the Palestinian cause.” (taken from Asharq Alawsat, Tariq Alhomayed editor)
As far as I am concerned, the Arab sin against the Pals has been ongoing for 60 years. Used and abused by the Muslim world for their political gains. The horror in the Western media is so hypocritical and so damned deluded. Where are the reports of Hamas forcing Pals to the rooftops to be slaughtered? where are the media reports of the Pals being killed by Hamas errant rockets? where are the reports of Pals being treated in Israeli hospitals? Where are the reports of 300 trucks full of aid going into Gaza through Karet shalom crossing? Yes, indeed the media is driving the frenzy and I find it disgusting they will not say what Alhomayed has said.

Ann: About 20 years ago, I listened in complete disbelief as a VN vet in a bar told my boyfriend and I that America had won the Tet Offensive. It was Memorial Day, so neither of us wanted to argue with a veteran, but I remember thinking that the man (who was obviously intelligent) was either completely misinformed or suffering from PTSD to hold such bizarre views. Why, “everyone” knew we had lost Tet; after all, that’s what Walter Cronkrite had told us and Walter Cronkrite wouldn’t lie to us, would he?

Well, subsequent reading told me that that old vet was right after all. We had won – bigtime- but Cronkrite told us we lost and we – the American people – accepted what he said because there were no credible alternative sources of information.

I think of that vet all the time these days. I know now what he felt like – and I wish I could apologize to him.

“If the liberals wanted to find oppressed people they could find them in Darfur.”

True, and there are liberals who loudly complain about Darfur (without, y’know, being willing to do anything about it… one of the other standard positions of liberals). Like I said, I think that there are liberals who are antisemites, and plenty of them, but I don’t think they form the majority.

In Israel, there’s the victim/oppressor dynamic, but there’s also a racial aspect. The Palestinians are an “oppressed” non-white people, while the majority of Israelis are white. This point of view is represented by the whole “Zionism=racism” argument. Put together that with the oppressed/oppressor dynamic and you have a winning issue for the typical loudmouth leftist to get upset about. Combine the above with the fact that the Jews *were* victims (and thus garnered liberal sympathy for a few years after WW2) but insisted on not being victims ever again, and your typical left-winger will pop blood vessels in his rage at the Zionists. They hate traitors to their cause.

“Hamas had better get on the phone and sue for peace or in about 1 week
all their top leaders gonna be dead.”

The abhorrent Hamas is a sympton not the cause. Nothing will be achieved by this mess except more civilians will be dead and those in Gaza will be more determined to take revenge. Those who live by sword and all that.

Many here have mentioned the abysmal performance of what can be called “the old establishment media” or the “mainstream media.” Many report on stories they have either heard or have even independently verified. Most here know that much of the suffering of Palestinians is show. Some of us have seen through independent video, the ambulance shows. Injured suddenly appear, along with a very, very, fortuitous ambulance, so the injured can be helped by one or two “helpers’ into the ambulance. We see the ambulance race away, presumably to a hospital of clinic about twenty minutes away. Yet we see the exact same ambulance three minutes later picking up yet another seriously injured “victim.” After watching these video’s over & over again, one realizes it like someone hit the rewind button, repeatedly.
But what posters here & elsewhere also say that I think is important. The public has lost faith in the media. We have seen how “journalists” of our time have excluded reports that “they” have decided are not politically motivating, in favor of reports that substantiate “their” claims of horror or abuses. The “alternative media’ is how many have seen some real videos & have read real reports of events. And much of what we have seen or read, goes totally unreported by the old establishment media. We go nuts trying to figure out what the narrative is based solely on Palestinian suffering, yet it ignores the despicable actions by Palestinians, as though they alone suffer while Israel alone persecutes.
We all know Israel is no angel all of the time, just as America is no angel all of the time. We also know many of the excesses & abuses reported are total exaggerations meant to infuriate the public & bring them to agree with an agenda select individuals want us to buy into. In short, we are being fed propaganda.
The point is, when Congress gets around to limiting or editing internet content, we had better be ready to scream foul & continue to make all noise necessary to stop such restrictions on the distribution of information. Its coming folks. There will be voices who “use” words like fairness and balance (they heard it first on Fox News & now desire to co-opt the phrase so they can pretend they care about all of us), when what they really want is to control information. Not just what info is available, but which info is available, and even if info is to be available.
We live once again in dangerous times. The totalitarians among us seek to placate us by providing an easy to find victim & by providing an easy to attack aggressor. The internet has allowed some of us to see more truth. Politicians & some select special people (in their own minds I add), want to make sure any info comes from them,. through them, and matches the story “they” want told. The story is meant to empower these select folks & to make them wealthy or even wealthier.
Beware the “Fairness Doctrine.” Beware “internet editing.” Beware controls of internet content or access to internet sites.
We live in dangerous times, once again!

To your subtitle, “Why does Hamas victimize its own people? And why doesn’t the media call them on it?” I have two replies:

1. Because Islamist radicals place no value on individual lives. They see “their” people as fodder for their pseudo-religious political fights.

2. Because the media are dominated by “progressives,” one of whose articles of faith is anti-semitism. They justify it with concern for the poor and oppressed, but that is belied by their refusal to condemn Hamas, as the instigator of violence, for its genocidal rhetoric and actions.

I just have ask what is acceptable? O.K. Israel is there NOW. They have with the Balfour Agreement conquered Palestine. With that said does that give them moral authority to do what they do? I think not. If my house was bulldozed and my Grandparents refused to leave the house they built and had paper work for and were murdered. I would also fight to the death. What is sad is the innocent suffer. Hamas and every Palestinian has every right to try to force Israel from Palestine. I am embarrassed by my countrys support for Israel. Yes born and reared in the U.S. How many of you would support American Indian land seizure today? Or Apartheid, Darfur ethnic cleansing, or the holocaust? That is what has been going on for years in Israel.

Those Hamas rockets are glorified fireworks. I completely understand why the Arabs call us the Great Satan and want Israel destroyed. I don’t agree but I truly understand. Israel is a oppressive occupier. And I want none of my tax dollars going there way. Israel gets the equivalent to $10,000.00 a year per citizen in U.S. aid.

You can’t address todays issues without facing what Israel really is. A occupying force that hordes all resources and keeps the original people in permanent refugee status.